[Paraview-developers] Custom object panels deprecated?

[Cory Quammen]

Perusing the ParaView plugin documentation at

http://www.paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView/Plugin_HowTo

I see that custom object panels are deprecated. Is that still the case?

If so, what is the suggested path for exposing filter or source
parameters that don't fit into the well-established integer, boolean,
string, and double properties, etc. for which the automatic GUI
generation works so well?

For example, say I have a custom VTK source that I am exposing in
ParaView via the plugin mechanism. This VTK source has a method that
takes a pointer to a base class of some non-VTK object defined in an
external library, say

SetBaseClass( BaseClass * base )

I would like to provide a drop down list enabling the user to choose
which subclass of this base class should be instantiated and set
through this method. Now, I could do this with an enumeration by
providing a

SetBaseClass(int enumerant)

method and taking care of instantiating the base class inside my VTK
object. However, each subclass has different properties that I would
like to expose in the object panel whenever that type of subclass is
selected in the menu. A close analogy that exists in ParaView is the
Glyph Filter. This filter enables you to choose the glyph source from
a menu. When you change the glyph type, the settings for the glyph
source appear in the object panel.

To me, the simplest thing would be for me to write a custom object
panel and take care of all the non-VTK stuff there. But if that
approach isn't going to be supported in the future, I obviously don't
want to pursue that.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

Cory

--
Cory Quammen
Research Associate
Department of Computer Science
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill